1. Technical Field
The present invention is related to a rack for stacking storage drums. More specifically, the rack is a modular unit that is assembled together in various combinations of modules to provide a modular unit that may be tiered upon drums stored on another modular unit.
2. Prior Art
Storage drums, available in 55 gallon and 30 gallon sizes, are commonly stored in large racks made of tubing and channel members welded together to form a rack. Such racks are permanently built up for use in a designated area. It is difficult to add to the rack if additional drum storage is needed and the rack is not designed to be disassembled. Welded drum stacking racks are unwieldy and are not usually used for transporting drums.
One improvement over welded drum stacking racks is a double drum rack sold by Equipment Company of America. Each double drum storage rack is adapted to receive two 55 gallon drums on its top surface. A second tier comprising a rack and two more drums may be stacked on the top surface of the first two drums. This type of drum rack may be stacked up to a maximum height of five tiers and is well suited for shipping drums. The double drum racks include fork truck tine openings for handling the rack with the drums stacked thereon. The double drum racks overcome many of the disadvantages of prior art welded drum storage racks because they may be moved easily with drums stored thereon and total storage capacity may be increased by simply adding additional tiers of racks or starting new columns of drum storage racks.
In double drum racks there is no provision for building upon the modules laterally to create rack modules capable of carrying three, four, or more drums in a row. If racks having more than two rows were required it would be necessary to specially design racks to carry higher multiples of drums. The parts, particularly end plates, required to make up a three, four, or larger drum rack would be expensive to manufacture and difficult to assemble. The double drum racks are limited to use with a particular size of drum and may not be tiered upon racks bearing other size drums.
These and other problems have been solved by the present invention as will hereinafter be described.